A friend's wife had a C. Itoh back In The Day. It had the large clunky cast lugs. I'm thinking maybe C. Itoh/Brigestone/Kabuki were all one corporate entity. I remember Kabuki had a very strange model called the Submariner, with stainless steel tubes, maybe the whole thing was stainless. Seem to recall magazine ads of it submerged in water, suggesting that it was "waterproof". The stylized Kabuki mask logo on the headtube was cool, though. Can't necessarily say C. Itoh/Bridgestone/Kabuki made the best bikes from Japan, but they were definitely "interesting".
Regards,
Jerry Moos Houston, TX
Louis Schulman <louiss@gate.net> wrote: Interesting this topic comes up now. I saw the strangest bike boom Japanese bike on Saturday.
It was a C. Itoh, the predecessor I believe, to Bridgestone. The strange thing about this bike is that it had huge casts lugs (I don't know if they were steel or aluminum) and the 4 main tubes were stainless steel! There was a label that identified the tubes as stainless. They were polished to a mirror finish.
I guess the tubes were glued into the lugs, which had the design of lug points cast into them (looked really clunky). Otherwise, the bike appeared to be a bike boom el cheapo.
Ever see one of these? It was too small for me (maybe 54 cm), but if someone wants it, it is for sale at a local dealer.
Louis Schulman Tampa, Florida (where it is extremely cold, it went down to 36 degrees last night!)